Quote

However appalling to consider, however tedious to enact, every novel requires furniture, whether it is to be named or unnamed, for the characters will be unable to remain in standing position for the duration of the story.

Jonathan Lethem

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Jonathan Lethem
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: February 19
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
New York City
New York
Jonathan Allen Lethem
Harry Conklin
Position
Unable
Story
Requires
Unnamed
Whether
Remain
Enact
Stories
Consider
Appalling
Character
Characters
Duration
Every
However
Tedious
Standing
Furniture
Novel
Named

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Every book is a kind of experiment in doing something that feels impossible.
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I prefer old books and find them more relevant. I dislike new books. It's like drinking wine that's not ready.
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All paths lead nowhere choose one with heart...
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My inner chemistry had been hijacked by a mad scientist, who poured the fizzy, volatile contents of my heart from a test tube marked SOBER REALITY into another labeled SUNNY DELUSION, and back again, faster and faster, until the floor of my life was slick with spillage.
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What's lucky about my career in general is that I stumbled into what every writer most wants. Not repeating myself and doing strange things has become my trademark.
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I got into underground comics fairly early on and kind of wandered away from the superhero stuff, but I was an art student and I was drawing a lot as a kid.
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There's something about the rhythms of language that correspond to the rhythms of our own bodies.
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I had an all-Fear of Music iPod, just versions of the 11 songs from the record. No other songs allowed.
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I want to write books that can be read a hundred years from now, and readers wouldn't be bogged down by irrelevant details.
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I believe that written stories will continue to survive because they answer an essential human need. I think movies might disappear before the novel disappears, because the novel is really one of the only places in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.
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I just noticed recently that in one book after another I seem to find an excuse to find some character who, to put it idiotically simply, is allowed to talk crazy.
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The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals.
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Writing is a necessity and often a pleasure, but at the same time, it can be a great burden and a terrible struggle.
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I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I do with his example.
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With a book you can read the same paragraph four times. You can go back to page 21 when you're on page 300. You can't do that with film. It just charges ahead.
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The computer is the way I'm making books, but I still think about the physical properties. I visualize the length of a book, the proportions of a book, in material terms.
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Writing is physical for me. I always have the sense that the words are coming out of my body, not just my mind.
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When people call something original, 9 out of 10 times they just don't know the references or original sources involved.
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Artists freeze themselves into these weird postures that are meant to be impressive and involving, then they fling them out into the world like Polaroids, and then they move on. And I'm stuck in this intense relationship to the Polaroid.
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Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit.
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